Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the New Democratic Party and every single fisher person and plant worker that I have spoken to across this country, we want to thank the hon. member from Charlotte, New Brunswick for his private members' bill. It is absolutely fantastic.
It is rather shameful that a private member from the opposition has to introduce a bill of this nature. Even to have to discuss this bill is incredible. He basically wants the rights of fishermen and plant workers to be at the table when discussions or decisions are made on their behalf.
I wonder how much consultation the government did with Bombardier before giving it the largest defence contracts of all time. I bet it consulted big time on that. But when it comes to fisheries matters, there is no consultation at all.
The parliamentary secretary indicated the five principles under which the Department of Fisheries and Oceans operates. I would like to give the Government of Canada and those people listening today the five principles under which I think the DFO operates.
The fifth one is do not tell anything to anyone in a timely manner. Number four, pit one region against another. Number three, waste valuable tax dollars. Number two, put policies in place without consultation with those closest to the industry. The number one principle under which DFO operates is fatten up the bureaucracy in Ottawa and keep the minister in the dark. That is exactly what is happening.
It is unknown to many Canadians, but DFO has about 800 people working for it in Ottawa and I do not see anybody fishing in the Rideau Canal.
The territory of Nunavut has two million square kilometres. Guess how many enforcement officers are up there. For two million square kilometres, there are two. There are six parking lot policemen for the West Block and Confederation building parking lots. It is unbelievable where this government puts its priorities.
I will give the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans credit because it is due. He mentioned that the all-party Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans will come up with some serious and strong recommendations and preamble language to assist the government in what it should do for the future of the fisheries. I definitely agree with him on that.
Let us face it. Today in the papers there is talk about a crisis with the Atlantic salmon on the east coast. There is talk about a crisis with the salmon on the west coast. That is quite amazing because they are not supposed to join. The common thread is we have a crisis on the west coast, a crisis on the east coast and a crisis within our freshwater fishery in Manitoba and Ontario. What is the common theme of all these three? The DFO.
Mr. Speaker, do you want to know why since the day I was elected I have been calling for a public judicial inquiry into the practices and policies of this department? This department is completely out of control. It is absolutely out of control. It has no vision. It has no future. A good example of that is the so-called post-TAGS review.
In 1992 the government of the day put a moratorium on the cod and came up with the adjustment programs, NCARP, AGAP and TAGS. To this point $3.4 billion has been spent and there is more capacity to catch the fish today than there was when it started the moratorium. It is absolutely incredible.
I cannot understand why the government will not consult with fishermen when it comes to the allocation of quota, when it comes to the type of gear, when it comes to everything else.
Recently in southwest Newfoundland there was an announcement of a quota of 20,000 tonnes of cod. I would certainly hope that the government would work with the fishermen of that region on a sustainable harvest of that catch.
As we know, Atlantic salmon is in deep trouble. If big nets, big draggers or trawlers are used, it is well known what will happen. A lot of bycatch is going to happen and history shows that a lot of this bycatch will be thrown overboard.
Regarding the issue of TAGS, the fishermen and plant workers of the east coast have been asking and begging for answers from this government. The minister of human resources indicated to this House that there would be a report in place on post-TAGS. What do we get? We get federal officials gallivanting around Atlantic Canada presenting their new vision of the post-TAGS program. It is absolutely unbelievable that he would disregard all members of this House when it comes to such a viable issue. Obviously DFO does not listen to the fishermen and plant workers.
The 1983 Lockeport, Nova Scotia experiment with National Sea pumped hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars into this company that just sucked the oceans dry.
In central Canada there is the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation. With absolutely no consultation with the fishers of the north, it sort of picks and chooses who it wants to talk to and its policies are set basically on that.
I do not understand why this government has such an incestuous relationship with those people, for example, on the west coast in the Sport Fishing Institute. We have a classic example of Ms. Velma McCall. She used to work for the Sport Fishing Institute. She lobbied very hard for the Sport Fishing Institute to get an exclusion zone of commercial trollers around Langara Island. What happens a year later? This woman is now the ministerial assistant for the DFO on the west coast.
Tom Bird used to work for DFO. Guess who he works for now? The Sport Fishing Institute. The personal relationship between the hon. Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and Mr. Bob Wright of the Oak Bay Marine Group is absolutely scandalous. They pick and choose their policies, give them to their friends and under no circumstances do they consult with commercial fishermen of any kind or those people of the Coastal Community Network on both coasts.
It goes on and on. These are the types of people who will assist the government and DFO in new policies. They are Eric Tamma, Coastal Community Network from Ucluelet, Ross Helberg, the mayor of Port Hardy, Sam Ellsworth of Nova Scotia, Arthur Bull of the Bay of Fundy region, and Mark Butler of the Ecology Action Centre of Nova Scotia. These five people are just a small example of the experience and the expertise this government needs to listen to.
Again I have to say it is absolutely incredible that it takes a private member's bill in order to push this forward. I really encourage everyone on the Liberal side to take this bill seriously because it really is important and it is mandatory to involve the people who are closest to the resource to have their say in such a viable industry.